Yair Netanyahu criticised over tweet backing Farage, Orban and Wilders

The head of a British Jewish group has slammed Benjamin Netanyahu’s son Yair for cheering far-right politicians across Europe, saying it showed that “something is broken” between Israel and the Diaspora.

It comes after the prime minister’s outspoken son tweeted encouragement to Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Dutch Freedom Party chair Geert Wilders and Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini ahead of this week’s European elections.

Hannah Weisfeld, who founded Yachad, tweeted: “When the son of the Israeli PM wishes the biggest far-right sympathisers in Europe good luck for the elections, you know something is truly broken between Israel and the Diaspora.”

All four men are ethno-nationalists who publicly support Israel, and all four have been accused of being “anti-Muslim” and using racism to stoke a populist backlash against refugees fleeing war in Iraq and Syria.

Orban and Farage have been accused of using antisemitic tropes against liberal philanthropist George Soros, while a schoolteacher in Sicily was removed this month after her students compared Salvini’s treatment of immigrants to the Nazis’ treatment of Jews in the 1930s.

Yair Netanyahu followed up his endorsement by saying “these leaders are the true friends of Israel and the Jewish people” and that his critics were “crazy”.

His latest online foray follows his Twitter rant last month in which he said there was “no such thing” as Palestine “and never will be,” itself following news that he called Israeli police “Gestapo” for questioning him in a corruption case involving his father.